Photograph a bear in the wild

I was hiking with my dad in the Smokies. We saw a small bear just off the path. It wasn’t paying much attention to any of the hikers; just minding its own business burrowing around. We did not wander from the path (VERY foolish to do otherwise) but just snapped a quick picture and walked the OPPOSITE direction of the bear. It wasn’t a great picture, but the important thing was to have proof and not be dead :)

I saw a bear in the wild in Yosemite, completely by chance. We stopped by a lake, if we were a few minutes earlier or later we would have missed it.

Think for a moment: Where there’s baby, mama ain’t too far behind. What the hell was I thinking? Obviously, I’m luckier than I am smart.

I went to Yosemite this summer and had a close encounter with mama bear and babies. I was trying to cross a log at the time too and they were trying to cross as well. For the moment, I saw them I thought it was exciting, then I turned around because I didn’t want to bother them.

But I took it out my Alaska album, because my kids love to look at it all the time, and it scared them a little too much (bear’s eating a caribou he’d chased off a cliff, took pic from a raft. I think it was the same bear I’d run into on my after-dinner walk the day before—the bear in the picture is just a few feet away from where the creek (where we’d been walking and had the original encounter) feeds into the river.

It was the middle of the day, & out came the baby bear… scary cuz who knows where the mama is, & don’t wanna get between her & her cub!!!

........ get up very early and be prepared for a long wait. We don’t have bears in the UK but I have been to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks in the USA and saw both black bears and grizzlies. They were amazing (and I was kind of glad I was in the car when I saw the grizzly).

What on earth is the sick irony that our neighbor just informed us that there was a baby bear picked up at the end of our street a few weeks ago?! We live in the city! How on earth could that happen? Not only that but how could I possibly not be here to witness it and get a picture?! What is UP with that?! Sick twist of fate….irony…whatever you choose to call it, it sucks! That is just not funny….......not funny at all.

Well I already photographed a wild moose cow and her calf about 3 years ago while I was up in NH. My husband just about died from fear she was going to kill me, but I guess my ignorance was my protection. I just calmly and slowly walked right up to her and started taking pictures. She let me get about a foot away from her and she and the baby just kept on eating. It was amazing….....I was so close I could feel her body heat and wanted so badly to pet her neck but I wasn’t that stupid. Normally I would never do such a careless thing as walk up to a moose but we had seen this one several times during the week while we were there and each time she let me get closer and seemed to have no fear which is why I chanced it. We nicknamed her Lucy. I can’t wait to go back…...but MEANWHILE I would really like to photograph bears in the wild. Although I would never walk up to one like I did the moose.